


Homecoming

by Schattenfeuer



Series: Imaginaerum [1]
Category: Nightmare Harem (Visual Novel)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gen, Other, Reimagening, Unhealthy Relationships, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25783783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schattenfeuer/pseuds/Schattenfeuer
Summary: And the circle begins anew, everlasting, as the dream once again begins to die.
Series: Imaginaerum [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870483
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Homecoming

Nightmare was dying, slowly but surely the flames that had been burning so brightly to keep this dream of a world alive was running out of fuel, was consuming itself and then slowly dwindling, reducing itself to embers and ash. Another victim was needed, another fresh faced, warm blooded heart filled to the brim with energy. A new cast of actors entered the stage, the curtain rose and this play was about to unwind in all its grisly glory. 

Oltea’s dream cried bitter tears at the thought of sacrificing another to keep itself alive, but no amount of regret could sway this entity from its chosen path, now that its host was no longer alive to nurse it, it resorted to all and everything to lengthen its artificial life. So it reached out with phantom fingers, towards the stray rays of the moon, to steal and bent and manipulate it, trapping it in a cage of bones, strengthened this prison with flesh and blood and finished this macabre artwork with a beating heart, a heart cold and dead, resting inside an otherwise empty chest, a ticking time bomb waiting to be triggered.

Once the stolen ray of moonlight was completed, was changed and morphed into something else, the entity gazed upon it with pride swirling in eyes that held the twisting arms of galaxies in them, the seeker of the new victim was finished, complete with its six wings, the entity sent it out, to ride on the winds between the worlds. 

A trail of red tinged feathers had followed her entire life. She found them on the bed she had shared with her twin sister, every morning she gathered them from her seat at the cracked kitchen table, stepped over them on her way to help her father in his dusty little shop. She plucked them out of her hair after every nap in the shade of rundown houses and they floated on the surface of her soapy bathwater every evening when it was her turn to recline in the banged up, discolored bathtub while listening to her family arguing and laughing.

Her family joked about her having a guardian angel watching over her. She, at that time blissfully unaware, laughed and nodded along, thought nothing unusual of it, even when the feathers started to grow in size, right alongside her own body as she started to slowly shed the phases of childhood. 

The seeker had wandered through the world for a long time, had gone where the wind would carry him, crossed oceans and mountains in equal measures to find the perfect sacrifice, someone willing, someone whose heart was soft enough to be shaped into the perfect crib, but at the same time the person in question had to carry enough strength within them hold up the world on their shoulders. Many of the humans encountered fitted in one or the other criteria, but none fell in both, any other being would have long given up, frustrated by the fertile exercise this undertaking had become. But not the seeker, had the entity not plucked him from the sky for this very purpose? Had he not been gifted with everything necessary to see into the hearts and souls of those alive? For what if not for success.

When he found her, she was still too young, her heart not strong enough to hold the dying dream within it and her mind still that of a young child, if given the power then and there, she would have squashed it unknowingly, would have treated this as a game and not as the honor that it was. As he spread his wings over her protectively, no, possessively, he watched with disdain how not only her body and mind slowly matured throughout her draining childhood, but also her loyalty towards those she called family, if he were to take her away one day soon, he feared that those connections would make her reject the dream and therefor making it all an exercise in vain. 

The fire was an accident but it played perfectly into his plans, all he needed to do was to stretch his wings out wide and enwrap her entirely, as the flames could not touch him, their hissing echoed like that of enraged snakes as they flickered and danced and finally consumed themselves in their destructive hunger, leaving only her behind, nearly untouched and the only survivor to bury the ashes of her shattered life.

Fire and smoke had failed to lay a finger on her, but grief did not, it wreaked havoc inside of her and forced his hand, for if he did not, she would have swallowed the little death bit by chalk white bit, until her tongue was covered in bony powder and her eyelids leaden by chemical tiredness, when she cried at night into her pillows and her sheets, it was him that held her hand and stroke her hair, she didn’t even question his sudden presence, there were never any words exchanged between the two of them and yet he seemed to know things about her that she herself did not. 

At one time, she could barely bear the look of him, imposing and silent, eternal as he stood at the side of her hospital bed, averted her eyes in shame and regret driven shyness every time his gaze thought hers, a thing he did not like at all, because it could be pointed out as rejection and that was dangerous. He had to snuff out the seed of rebellion before it could take any roots, before it could start to grow into full fledged resistance, so he took one of her eyes, watched her panic as her view began to dim and the blueness of it turned milky and cloudy, before comforting her in a show of silent support, he was here, he would do her bidding, he would never leave her, all the little things that would make her unfitting for being Nightmare’s perfect cradle were slowly removed one way or another. 

It had been the longest of time since he had left the place where he had been created, yet he felt the end of his journey coming closer with each passing year that bled into the other. Plucking at the string that bound her to him, he dragged her along, out into the open when the red moon dawned, it was time to go home, All she needed was a little push, a wish sent to the blood drenched eye up above and he watched her fall down into the emptiness between the worlds, deeper and deeper past remnants of memories and shards of Nightmare’s previous cribs and cradles, all abandoned, all rotten and dishearteningly empty until the entity opened its star speckled arms to welcome its newest home. 

In the midst of the chaos and the confusion, he watched her panic unravel from the sidelines, arms neatly folded behind his back, he hummed a low tune of approval as Nightmare nestled perfectly into the empty plain he had created within her heart, docked onto her very being like they were made for each other. And in a way, they were. All he had to do now, was to watch the feast unfold. Their lives, hers and his, for the one that housed the many. 

“Welcome Home, Faye.”


End file.
